Heavier Than Heaven
by Lochanmor
Summary: Eric Northman is an aging rockstar with a past that haunts him. Sookie Stackhouse is a struggling dancer plagued by circumstance. Her unusual ability to 'see' things brings them reluctantly together. When other exotic dancers start coming up dead, Eric and her decide to figure out what's hunting them before it gets her next. AH/AU. Triggers for drug use.
1. Chapter 1

I.

He grazed the pad of his thumb over the screen of his phone, a slow mixture of impatience gracing his features. What he was impatient with he did not know. Perhaps he was impatiently with his inability to make a decision. But beyond that, he felt the rush of endorphins and adrenaline skate freely through his system. He didn't even have to get the drugs to feel it. Just the thought of the impending possibility of sticking a needle in his arm again took him straight up through the galaxy.

The screen stared back at him monotonously, a cheerful brightness that be-leagued its impending doom. An unsaved number, an open text message. 'U got any Boy?' was all it held, just waiting for the tap of his finger to send it off. He knew once he did what would be in motion, and that train stopped for no one. He _was_ a train once he started using again; he barreled through anyone and everything indiscriminately. People would try to stop him and they would be bowled over and cut up for their efforts. He would watch the damage he did with a passing indifference, but nothing, nothing stopped that train once it started.

Rain beat lightly down on his windows with the gray Seattle sky out beyond him. The sun hadn't even set yet but you could not really tell the difference. Days and nights ran together in the dense autumn; the weather had come this week. Summer had bid adieu like a flighty lover in the twilight before dawn broke.

He had parked on the side of the street on 3rd and Seneca when the desire had finally gained enough momentum that it had evolved into action. He cracked the window and lit up a cigarette, the smoke wafting around him indolently for lack of breeze. The humidity made it feel like the smell stuck to you even worse than normal. It reminded him of Louisiana, of youth, of an upbringing better left in the recesses and cavities of his mind.

He started to catalouge in his mind how this would go. This is what they warned him about in rehab. Seven months in Malibu that had felt like a fever dream. He was trying to rationalize and set limits for himself so he could justify getting high. He would just use this one night. Maybe just for the weekend. Maybe just for the week, like a little vacation, he had earned it...

He growled lowly in anger at his own stupidity and inability to control himself, and just as he was about to throw his phone out into the street, it started to vibrate. A call. It was Chow. They all checked up on him a lot now. They did it under the guise of studio time, heading out for a few drinks, going to a show together so they could hang out backstage and prey on the groupies. For once, it was a welcome distraction. At least it wasn't Pamela hammering him about interviews and appearances.

"Hey brother. Just dropped by your place. Where you at?"

"Just taking a drive." He immediately regretted the words, as he knew what Chow would think. The sad part was he wouldn't have been wrong. He was slinking off to dark corners and parts unknown to get high, or he had at least planned to.

"Me and Clancy are heading to a strip joint over by Bonney Lake, I hear it's wild. Kind of a hidden little roadhouse joint. Sounds like some freaky Rob Zombie shit. Meet us out there?"

He was not listening very well. He had that thousand yard stare that had become a central figure in his features as of late. Well, as of four years ago. A strip club with his bandmates sounded distracting enough to keep his hands clean tonight. He could even get some whiskey. Complete sobriety would have been best, but as it was, any avoidance of heroin was a victory at this point.

He mumbled an agreement and waited for the ping of his phone for the text that Chow was sending him with the address. He started his Camaro back up and took a deep breath, shuddering it back out on release. Whenever he got weak like this, he could see Indira's sweet smiling face in the center of his mind, like a third-eye, like some distant prayer he was too tired to complete. A manifestation of his guilt. He should have been thinking of her as a lesson in what happens to junkies: they quit or they die, or so the old adage went. Indira had died and he was trying to quit. But he wasn't thinking of that. He was thinking of how when he was high, she almost felt close enough to touch again.

II.

The lights were low in most of the club and in the rest of it they flashed and pulsed like a lover's heartbeat, an erratic ebb and flow. Chow had been right. It was not a goth club and nor was it a roadhouse. It was some demented combination of the two. He felt like he was an extra on an outtake of the Devil's Rejects. The smoke was thick and the music was loud, Jonathan Davis screaming through the speakers sharply about how all day he dreamed about fucking.

He wondered how he had never heard of the place before. When he voiced this Clancy mentioned that it had been opened three years ago, and he did not wonder anymore. Three years ago he had been so out of it they could have fought and lost the next World War and he would have been hard pressed to rouse the details.

Three years ago their newest album had just released at number seven on the charts. Three years ago Chow had married his wife Felicia. Three years ago Clancy had been working on his second divorce and Rasul had been on a 'hiatus' while he got his alcoholism under control. Three years ago, he had died in his apartment of a heroin overdose on the one year anniversary of Indira's death. It had only been dumb luck or providence that Pam, their manager, had stopped by that night. When he hadn't opened the door she had broken the lock in a fit of long building anger, probably expecting to go inside and tear him a new one for not answering the phone for four days. Instead she had found him blue on the couch with a belt around his arm.

Of the lot of them Chow had settled down and matured the most. He had met Felicia when Eric had met Indira when they were touring Scandinavia. Felicia and Chow had fallen in love and had bought a house and Chow had needed no prodding from his new lover to clean his act up. They flowed cleanly and sweetly together. Chow barely drank at all anymore. While Felicia and Chow flourished, Eric and Indira had spun out of control rapidly, even if they had coasted their addiction for a blissful few years together. When Indira picked up the needle the first time, he had followed her down that rabbit hole with nary a second thought. He hadn't even suggested she quit. He still blamed himself for that.

Eric shook his head as though maybe he could shake the thoughts away with it. He heard Clancy let out an appreciative whistle and he looked up to the stage. Whether Clancy was whistling at the zaftig blonde who had made her appearance on stage or because of the fact that their song was blaring over the speakers while she made her way to the pole was irrelevant. He was transfixed.

They were sat far back to the left of the stage so as to not draw much attention to their party. If anyone recognized them, and he was sure someone did, they didn't bother them and he was grateful for it. Although Pam would have been happy if a few fan photos popped up of them online.

The dancer on stage moved around to the sound of his voice slowly and deliciously. He scrutinized her from afar. She was not an exceptionally good dancer, though not a bad one. She certainly wasn't the smallest or even the fittest girl who had taken the stage tonight. She was thick and she moved well like she was very in tune with her body or else very in tune with what people thought of her body. He had seen a self conscious stripper before and it was a pitiful sight. This girl had no such reservations.

The act of her moving so erotically to his heavy dictation was outstandingly arousing. He had never seen someone strip to a Helvete song before and he wondered that he hadn't asked a girl for a private show up until now with his music as the conductor. He had done himself a disservice. His cock twitched in appreciation as he watched her ass bounce and grind. He hadn't exactly been abstinent the last four years, but he couldn't remember the last time he had been turned on so completely. Or maybe he just didn't want to remember.

It took him a $100 bill to get the redheaded dancer in the back of the club to talk to him and another $500 for her to give him the blonde dancers name and address. He had wanted a cell phone number, but red informed him that blonde didn't have a cell phone number and he shirked the idea of taking her home number and calling lest a husband or a boyfriend answer. What kind of stripper didn't even have the cash flow to pay a cell phone bill was beyond him but it was no matter.

He left earlier than Chow and Clancy and sat on the hood of his red '64 Camaro smoking Marlboros until he watched her walk out of the employee entrance, her hair up in a high ponytail and sporting a large sweatshirt that was at least three sizes too big for her, her face clean of the heavy makeup she had wore on stage. The bouncer, who was bald and doing his best impression of a Mr. Clean lookalike walked her to her car and gave her a kiss on the cheek, his hand resting on her hip before she got into a late model SUV with... wheelchair hookups on the back? He frowned and got in his car and followed her out to the highway and back into the streets of downtown Seattle, feeling for all the world like a stalker. But he was nothing if not persistent when he set his sights on something, often to his very own detriment.

II.

Sookie was tired, and she did not feel particularly well. She had planned to go on stage at least twice more but found herself leaving at midnight with a headache and plans to go home and fall asleep as soon as her face hit the pillow. The smoke and the noise and the energy of everyone around her was more than she could take some nights.

Her truck glided through the wet narrow streets of the city and she nearly fell asleep at a red light at least once. When she finally got to her apartment she hollered an internal victory as she found a parking spot on the street that didn't require a whole lot of walking, a priceless rarity.

She pulled the keys out of her ignition and sighed as she saw the red Camaro pull up and park down the street and behind her a good tread. She had seen him in the club and in the parking lot. People had whispered about him and a few of the girls couldn't keep their eyes off him. She figured he was somebody but just who he was eluded her.

It was not the first time she had been followed home or stalked from her workplace. She had a few restraining orders on file in King County and she was not looking forward to adding another. Although this man was handsome and what he was doing stalking some poor mediocre stripper was a question for anyone, she had learned long ago that perverts and psychos came in all sorts of packages. And tonight was just not a good night to fuck with her.

She grabbed her switchblade out of her purse and gripped it in her right hand pulling the cuff of her sweatshirt down to conceal it and stepped out into the chill of the night to confront the man walking towards her.

He was massive, and that was no exaggeration. Tall and broad-chested and blonde and looking like a straight viking, if vikings had been metalheads. His hair hung down to his shoulders and if his hands were any indication, he was fully tatted. She wouldn't know for sure though as his leather jacket concealed what appeared to be very impressive biceps...

Why the hell was she checking this guy out? She shook her head, brought herself up and stood tall.

"You followed me from the club?" Her voice was shrill and accusing and she put every ounce of power she could behind the words. Showing weakness would be a mistake. He continued to saunter towards her and put his hands up in a show of deferment. She didn't like that he was continuing towards her.

"You stop right there!" She commanded, her hand unconsciously readjusting and gripping the handle of the blade tighter. He looked towards the movement and his eyes widened slightly in surprise.

"You think I am going to hurt you?" He asked in astonishment and took a step backwards. She preened. That was better. She hoped he at least had the good sense to be scared of her. "I apologize. I can see how you might think that. You must have plenty of admirers."

She decided to ignore his last comment and tried to keep her features schooled to some semblance of what she hoped was intimidating. She was so small compared to him that the idea that she could overpower him was laughable, but with the switchblade she might be able to at least maim him a little bit. Just as she was about to ask him what the hell he wanted he spoke again.

"You don't have a cell phone number?" He asked it with such a simple curiosity he might as well have been asking how she thought the Seahawks were going to perform in the upcoming football season. "I would have called you if I could have lifted a number off that chatty redhead, but she said you didn't have one. So I was forced to follow you." he added nonchalantly.

Sookie guffawed unattractively. He eyed the blade in her hand dubiously and then, of all things, he smiled, like he found the possibility that she might jump him positively delightful.

"You are more than you seem." He said appreciatively, and then he looked up her up and down as he licked his lips, from her tippy top down to her toes. It was such an obviously lusty appraisal she felt like she was being undressed and it made the ire rise in her to a fever pitch. "Like a candle in a coal mine..." he added under his breath. He was overwhelming her and she realized that she had been standing in front of him dumbly for long enough.

"Why the hell are you here?" She advanced a step forward, hoping to back him to his car the way he came, but he didn't move an inch. Well, shit.

"You were fucking hot up there tonight. I want to spend time with you." The way he leered left no dispute on what kind of 'time' he wanted to spend with her. "I'd be willing to pay for it."

"You think I'm a prostitute?!" She realized she was hollering now, and the viking in front of her seemed to realize it too as he looked around to see if she was disturbing her neighbors. Then he rolled his eyes like he was talking to someone very slow.

"Whether or not I pay for it is irrelevant to me. Would it make you feel better to do it for free?"

"I'll not be doing it at all, you... you asshole!" She could not fucking believe this night, could not believe this interaction was even taking place. She turned on her heel and started to speed walk towards the stairs to her apartment and she was stopped by a large hand gripping her arm.

"I'm not trying to offend you." He said simply. He was earnest, but she knew he was at the end of his rope too by the tone of annoyance in his voice. Men like him didn't beg or ask twice. She looked at his face and for all that she thought he was the biggest douchebag in the world right now, he did look confused. She reckoned he was not a man who was used to hearing 'no' very often. Especially from a stripper.

"You really need to work on your pickup lines." She dead-panned and shook out of his grip.

"I'll keep that in mind for the future and try to do better. How about you give me your number and I can call you up and ask you out another time?"

She was trying to be patient. She really was. But she was _tired._ And even if this man did look like he would probably give her the lay of her life he had pretty much squandered any hope of her looking at him as a potential suitor after this display. He was overbearing, offending, and way out of line. And now he wouldn't take no for an answer. She was fed up.

"You want my number? What number do you want...?" She lead, asking him for his name without asking.

"Eric."

"Eric. Right. Eric, I have plenty of numbers for you. Three for instance. That's the number of people I'm supporting right now. Two is the number of adults I'm supporting that need round the clock medical care." She stopped and brushed her fingers on her chin like she was thinking and then brightened like she remembered. "Six is the age of my daughter. Five is the number of years my baby daddy has been in federal lock up over in Walla Walla. $38.62 is the number of dollars I have left in my bank account. Do you need any other numbers?"

She peered at him and he matched her stare for stare. His easy-going leer had given way to tight frown. His eyes which had initially bounced with a simple glee were now downright glacial. There was nothing left to say and her bed was calling her name. She turned around and walked up to her apartment and tried not to fumble with her keys, grateful when she wasn't accosted again.

The next day Eric woke early and looked out through his windows down to the ferries floating out in the Puget Sound. For the first time in months, he picked up his guitar and he let his mind drift out to sea the same way and he played. And the songs came to him again like they used to. He had been pissed last night, but now he smiled. His anger had him feeling more like himself than he had in years.


	2. To

I.

Sookie was still laying in bed late that night, or rather very early that morning, when she felt herself jolt awake with a start like someone had lit her up. She sensed that creeping fear she knew well. That feeling of cold dread, like breathing deeply in the snow, biting and painful and consuming. It was one of _those_ dreams. She knew it in a way that was natural and deep down and in her bones. Her body was asleep and she couldn't move it but her mind was sharp. That familiar panic cocooned in surrender and resignation was rising up in the back of her throat like bile, a raving reaction beyond consciousness.

She opened a single tired eye and looked towards the foot of her bed. The curtains on her window were open to the starry northwest night and her room was awash in a pale bath of moonlight. The girl sitting on the edge of her bed was stretching, her arms high up in the air in a y-shaped arc. She was small and svelte, her sable skin luminous. Her hair was a fluffy mane of beautiful chocolate brown curls that reached down to her impossibly tiny waist. She moved her head from side to side, the bones cracking in her neck, like she had just come up from a deep slumber.

The eternal slumber.

Sookie knew better than to talk. She knew better than to scream now that she was no longer a child. When someone came to her like this, they did the talking. That's just the way it was. She was nothing more than an unwilling go-between, an enslaved human talk diary. She had lived with this unwelcome ability for as long as she could remember. Seeing dead people and feeling all the nasty things they liked to push on you, the grief and the sadness and the longing and the pain, was terrible. Over the years she had learned ways to protect herself from unwelcome visitors but there was no stopping the truly determined. She propped herself up on her elbows and scurried backwards as close to the headboard as she could get.

The woman looked back at her now and Sookie was stricken by the color of her eyes. She had never seen someone Middle Eastern with such bright blue eyes in her life. She was dazzling and shocking, and mercifully, she was showing herself to Sookie whole. However she had passed in life had not been bloody or else the woman didn't identify too strongly with it.

_Indira._ She heard it in her mind. Indira turned around to face her fully and sat criss-cross applesauce like a schoolgirl. She was twirling a perfect curled lock in her fingers. Indira opened her mouth and Sookie held her breath, hoping for a quiet sweet lilt, but fully prepared to hear a demonic voice or a blood-curdling scream. She was jaded.

"Eric is being such a little bitch."

"Huh?" Sookie asked stupidly. It was like they were girlfriends gossiping at a sleepover. About _Eric_? Lord help her, she felt annoyance mixed with rage, even if it was tempered down by fear. He was long gone after their altercation earlier and he was still ruining her night.

"I never took him for such a pussy, but you saw him." Indira rolled her eyes, her tone exasperated and accusatory. She then let out a comical huff, her mouth turned up at the corners in a lazy, unceasing smirk. Sookie merely nodded in agreement, too dumbstruck to have a conversation. If Eric earlier was Eric acting 'like a pussy', as Indira had so elegantly put it, she shuddered to think what his normal manner was.

Indira took her hand and Sookie flinched. Her touch was cold and damp. Pretty much just how you would expect someone's skin to feel when they had spent their night in the grave. Don't scream, don't scream, don't scream.

"I need you to tell him." Indira commanded conspiratorially, once again keeping up the sleepover vibe she seemed to emanate. Of course she did. They all 'needed her to tell' someone. That's the only reason they ever came to her.

"Tell him this. Tell him the world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially."

"That's not very uplifting!" She accused. Indira was not even saying it to her directly and she already felt infinitely more depressed from hearing it.

Then Indira began to cry, which was only horrific because she was still smiling. It was like she couldn't stop smiling, like her mouth was permanently pulled up and etched into a wide grin. Sookie felt the terror rising in her like a wave on the verge of breaking. Her eyes grew wide and she made a feeble attempt at yanking her hand out of the small woman's grasp to no avail. She tried to breathe deeply, to tell herself that Indira couldn't hurt her. No one who had ever appeared to her had ever hurt her. That didn't mean they couldn't scare her to death. Indira started to clutch at her chest, bringing Sookie's hand up with her own, and Sookie wondered if she was reliving a heart attack.

"Oh!" Indira wailed in between her sobs. "Oh, my heart is too big!" Sookie began to yank her hand away vigorously now. Underneath her fingers she could feel Indira's chest cavity starting to contort and expand and she wanted to scream but no sound would come. It was as if Indira's heart was literally growing too big and was about to burst out of her.

Jesus Christ, Shepard of Judea. For not the first time, Sookie wondered why she wasn't making millions writing horror movies. She had enough material for a shoddy B rate trilogy at least. Just as Indira opened her mouth to scream, Sookie squeezed her eyes shut in a childish attempt of escape and by the grace of God it worked.

She woke up. It was not night, but morning, and she was covered in the remnants of a cold sweat, her breath clipped and ragged. She grabbed the pillow next to her and screamed into it to relieve the tension the fear had woven into her muscles.

Fucking Eric.

II.

Eric stood in front of his record player, his hands in the pockets of his black jeans as he scanned the wall in front of him. The records fit together tightly and there were more than he could count. He wouldn't be pretentious enough to play his own music but he had to put something on. The silence always ate at him. And the journalist from Rolling Stone would be here any minute. It was the ten year anniversary of their first album that went platinum. _Sacrificial Feedings _was to Helvete what _The Black Album _was to Metallica. It had propelled them into infamy. _Hate To Feel_, the opening song, was a metal anthem.

And all that built up from the yearning and anger of a backwoods Louisiana boy raised on a pig slaughtering farm. He certainly could have done worse. He could have ended up a school shooter. Instead he had ended up on a stage in front of thousands of people spewing his hatred back at them.

Rolling Stone was doing a big piece on them for the albums anniversary and Chow was meeting him and the reporter at his place for an interview. He knew the article would be a rehash of old interviews and photographs but they had to have something new. It would be the same old shit they always asked about. At least Chow would be there so they could clown on the guy. He knew whatever album he played would be duly noted and he settled on _Adrenaline _by the Deftones.

Chow arrived not long thereafter and they messed around in the kitchen for awhile watching pointless yet hilarious Youtube videos. It wasn't until they made their way into the den where all the musical equipment was that Chow turned on him with a seriousness in his face that was not normal for the usually goofy guy he had come to know over the years. Chow set down the bass he had been playing on and leaned up against the couch, his arms crossed. Eric raised his eyebrows up at him but kept picking at the guitar he held.

"We didn't want to say anything right away..." Chow rubbed the back of his neck, looking around the room in a happily nervous way. "Felicia's pregnant."

"Is she now?" Eric smiled, following suit and finally putting his guitar down too. "I didn't know you had it in you."

Chow laughed and seemed to brighten at having revealed the information. Eric wondered why he was so nervous. He wondered if Chow was afraid that he would react unfavorably, in some odd twisted show of jealousy. Jealousy that Felicia was alive and pregnant and Indira was not. The self-loathing and shame came on hard at that thought.

"She's due early March. After this tour we got coming up, I'm gonna scale it back for a little while. I want to do this right, you know?" Eric softened at his words and clasped a reassuring hand on Chow's shoulder.

"Sure, man. I get it. Whatever you need to do. We got all the time in the world. And when you're done, Helvete's done, too." He pressed on at the incredulous look in Chow's face. "I mean it, man. Clancy, Rasul... I could keep going without them. Helvete can't keep going with you and me."

It wasn't lip service. Eric meant every word. Clancy had been the last one to join their band, but even he had been there for 12 years. Helvete started with Chow and Eric and it would end there. Chow had been the first person to answer the ad he had put out looking for band mates. Chow had been the first person to suggest Eric sing for the band instead of just playing lead guitar. Chow had been Eric's greatest fan and most complete sounding board long before anyone had ever given a shit who he was or what he had to say. And now, after decades together, he knew that Chow was as much as part of his music as anything. He'd rather the band die an organic death than keep going without him.

"Shit," Chow laughed. "I'm not going anywhere. You'll have to stake me before I drop out of Helvete. I just want you to know I'm taking it easy for a year or two. Felicia'll have me castrated if she ends up raising my offspring alone." They laughed, for Eric knew Felicia's fierceness firsthand, before Chow grew serious again.

"Felicia and me want you to be the Godfather. What do you think?"

Eric wasn't often struck speechless. Not that he talked a lot. He was silent most of the time, but not for lack of something to say. Not like he was right now.

"What does that mean?" He tried, the words sounding quieter than he meant them to.

"It means if something happens to me and Felicia, you'll raise the kid." Eric thought Chow a fucking moron to entrust such a responsibility on him. He, who had never cared for a child a day in his life. Who could barely string years of sobriety together. Who couldn't even keep his own wife alive. He still didn't know what to say. He simply nodded, blissfully saved by the sound of the doorbell ringing.

Don from Rolling Stone was just like every other asshole from every other magazine he had ever come across. He was a half-hearted fan with a complex like he owned the music he wrote about. He talked about Helvete and the thrash metal scene like he had single-handedly birthed it. Eric was annoyed with him immediately and his clipped answers were glossed over by the overly melodic laughing of Don who seemed to think everything rude he said was an inside joke between the two of them on the rest of the world.

His questions were decent, and Chow picked up the slack where he left the answers open-ended. He asked variations of the same things they usually asked. 'In 1987 you were opening for Pantera, in 1997 Pantera was opening for you. What was that like?' It had been fucking cool. 'You've often been referred to as 'the Radioahead of thrash metal.' What does that mean to you?' Eric wasn't a big Radiohead fan so he found it kind of insulting. 'When you toured with Motorhead, Lemmy Kilmster was quoted in the Hit Parader as saying he struggled to keep up with you, Eric. That's pretty high praise. Was there any truth to that?' Well, yeah. Eric didn't even really remember that tour, which he kind of regretted. It was an odd feeling to have been in the presence of one of his idols for almost a year and had been too fucked up on Jameson and speedballs to piece together a coherent memory of it.

When the interview was starting to wind down, Don coughed and looked at Eric directly.

"Your most recent album, _Ode to a Siren_ was released a year after your wife died. The album was very well received by fans and critics even though it was not as heavy as people were used to hearing from you. How did your wife's death-"

"Don't fucking talk about her." Eric cut him off, his eyes alight with a barely leashed pagan savagery. "You don't get to say her name."

This was what he hated about interviews. Someone always took it too far. They talked about Indira like she had been a prop, someone whose death meant nothing more than how useful it had been to his creative process. Like her life had no more value than it's effect on his album sales. It made him fucking ill with rage.

Chow, seeing Eric's fury on the rise, quickly schooled his face and backed him up. "We're not talking about that. Cut her name out of interview and don't talk about her again or this interview is fucking done."

Eric lit a cigarette and heard Don stumbling over apologies as he walked out to the balcony, slamming the door shut behind him.

III.

Sookie did not go into work that night. Part of her was scared she might see Eric there again, which she chastised herself about. The chances that she would see him again were slim. She had never seen him in the club before last night which very well meant he didn't even live in Seattle.

Instead she spent the day with her daughter. Jolene was six and seemed to grow bigger every day which both thrilled and depressed her. She let her play hookey from school and they had spent the afternoon playing in the rain at the park, her beautiful blonde curls bouncing as she jumped in each puddle she found on the walk back to their small apartment.

It was a three bedroom in a shitty part of town that she could still barely afford it. One room belonged to her and Jolene, one room belonged to Palmira, their caretaker, and one room belonged to Jason and Gran and the slew of medical equipment needed to keep them alive and comfortable on a daily basis.

Gran had raised her and Jason in Bon Temps, Louisiana after their parents had died when she was seven. And for that she felt that she would forever be in debt to her. She could have let the state take them, but she had struggled and scraped and kept their family whole. It was part of the reason Sookie was doing the same thing now.

As soon as Jason had turned 18 he had joined the army. A year later, Gran had suffered several strokes that had left her in a vegetative state. Since Sookie was struggling to make ends meet since Gran needed round the clock care, she had taken her aunt Linda's offer for the two of them to move in with her in Seattle. Only six months later, aunt Linda was dead of pancreatic cancer that had come on suddenly and abruptly. With no money to move and truthfully nowhere to even go, Sookie had worked three jobs and hired a caretaker so Gran could be looked at while she desperately tried to carry the rent and the medical expenses on her own.

Alcide had come into her life not long after. And with Alcide came Jolene. Alcide had provided income that had lightened the load on her for awhile, but once Jolene came, things were tight all over again. Alcide had started working at auto shop that doubled as a chop shop. The money was lucrative enough for Sookie to turn a blind eye to the fact that what he was doing was illegal. She never really knew the true extent of it because she never dug for the truth. When the whole thing had been raided for far more than illegal parts distribution and Alcide had gotten a ten year sentence for gun-running it had been like a physical blow. Suddenly she was all alone again, but this time there were two people to take care of instead of one.

She had thought things couldn't get worse. Then she got that late night phone call from North Carolina and she knew that the perils of her life had only just begun.

Jason had always been wild. When Gran and her had needed him, he had been too absorbed in his own life to offer much help except for the measly amounts of money sent sporadically. And on a hot summer night in June Jason had gotten liquored up and crashed his Mustang. Now he was in the same state as Gran. Neither of them were very responsive. She could have left Jason to the state to take care of as well, but just like her Gran all those years ago when Jason and her had shown up on her doorstep with nothing and no one in the world, there was something inside of her that grew pale and sick at the thought of giving up on her family. Jason and Gran were hers to take care of and by God she was taking care of them now, even if she was barely making it by.

When she and Jolene arrived home that evening, laughing and dropping their wet coats and boots by the front door, she noticed a small package sitting on the entry table. She eyed it skeptically as she hadn't remembered ordering anything. She used her keys to slit open the tape and pulled out the small black AT&T box. Inside she found a simple red flip phone. It was charged and powered on and when she opened it the background picture was what she could only assume was the cover art of some kind of rock album. Frowning, she opened up the contacts to try to find some kind of information. There was only one contact.

He was blonde, he was smirking in the picture, and he was listed ambiguously as 'Your Future Lover'. She put her face in her hands and groaned.


	3. Chapter 3

I.

Sookie stared down at her feet, lest she unwittingly lock eyes with the insufferable Andre. Today was their 'weekly staff meeting'. Now, she had not worked at a ton of strip joints, but even she thought such things seemed a pretentious oddity. Judging by the reactions of the other girls who worked there, who rolled their eyes at the weekly events, she decided her judgment was not far-fetched. They were strip veterans, after all.

Sophie-Ann may have only owned a strip club, but the way she carried herself left no doubt that she was queen of all she surveyed. She was always made up to perfection and wore smart suit sets like she worked in corporate finance. Andre, her brother, was her business partner. It was an open secret that he liked to sleep with the staff and he usually did. He had the pale, lashless look of a rabbit and the attitude of a spoiled teenager.

She stared down at her feet to avoid his gaze. Sometimes, Sookie looked at her feet, and would think 'Who's feet are these? What am I doing here?', polished pink and the frosted silver straps of the spiked stilettos digging into her ankles with the burn of being bound in rope. But, this was her life, unbelievable as it had become to her.

When the meeting was over and the girls began to disperse and mill about the dressing room, Sookie looked for Arlene Fowler. Arlene was the only 'chatty redhead' she knew and Sookie was still pissed about her information being given out to a total stranger. Sophie-Ann was still in the dressing room, and that was good. Sookie intended for her to know about this breech of conduct.

"Arlene Fowler, you ever give my name and address to a customer again, and me and you are gonna have words." Sookie sidled up to her, a perfectly manicured hand on her silk robe clad hip. Arlene was topless. Most of the girls in the dressing room were. It was hard to have a serious conversation with someone who had their tits out, but not impossible.

"I was doing you a favor, girl. He's loaded." Arlene looked incredulous, her brow scrunching up in consternation. Sophie-Ann walked up between them.

"Who was he?" She inquired.

"Eric Northman? Lead guy in Helvete? The whole band was here on Wednesday. Left Sookie a hell of a tip for dancing to one of their songs." Arlene answered, looking pointedly at Sophie-Ann and casting a withering glare at Sookie, likely for her clueless nature and ungratefulness.

So, that's who Eric Northman was. It made more sense now. The self-entitled attitude, the rugged good looks, the confidence. He was a rockstar. Sookie snorted derisively.

"I don't care if Bill Gates walks in here asking for my number. You keep that shit to yourself, you got it?"

Sophie-Ann was ignoring them now, probably thinking about how to make Helvete repeat customers and what it would mean for business. It occurred to Sookie that something seemed off about the day. Something creeping at the margins of her mind, a pesky, fleeting feeling. She took purchase of the room and tried to figure out what it was. Then it hit her. Dawn was not there. She always worked Fridays and she never missed a meeting.

Dawn Green was just about the only friend Sookie had made in a good long while. She had kids, too. She was not a perfect person by any stretch of the imagination. She drank and she was reckless and she was always taking up with the wrong men. She had no shame about her career as a stripper, seemed very much willing to gloat about it. She had habits and demons, but she loved her children and tried her best to do right by them in her own twisted way.

When she asked, Sophie-Ann had rolled her eyes derisively and informed her that Dawn was a no call, no show. It only served to increase Sookie's trepidation. A bad feeling formed at the base of her stomach, heavy and rolling. She walked out to the bar and used the phone to call Dawn's cell, three times in rapid succession. She left a stunted voicemail and made her way back to the dressing room, having exhausted her options for the time being.

II.

She had the cell phone for approximately five days when it finally rang.

Sookie had snorted in shock, nearly choking on the dinner she and Jolene and Palmira were eating around the dinner table in the kitchen. It was a primitive fare: crescent rolls, the kind that come in a cylinder that you get to bang against the counter to pop open, hot dogs (the last 4 from a pack that had been open a week ago), and mac and cheese. Not even Kraft. The really cheap, .79 cent variety. They were towards the end of the month. Rent was due in two days. Right now she was wondering how much she could get out of the Coinstar to put gas in the truck to get to work tomorrow night.

Palmira arched an eyebrow at her and Jolene eyed her with dubiety before diving back into her mac and cheese with a renewed gusto. Sookie pushed back her chair, the legs screeching across the cheap linoleum, and walked over to where the cell phone was sitting on it's charger. She did not know why she had kept it on and charged since receiving it. She had tried not to think too hard about her motivations.

Eric's presumptuous contact name flashed on the screen. Her heart ratcheted up to an insane level, her blood pressure immediately rising so that she could hear the beating in her ears. It was an irrational response. She could feel Palmira's critical gaze on her back, wondering why she didn't pick up the phone. She let it roll over to voicemail, like a coward, and felt instantly equal parts relieved and disappointed in her pusillanimity.

To her horror, the phone began to ring again. But gran hadn't raised her to be mousy and timid. She grabbed it, yanking it off the charger, and flipped it open.

"Hello?"

"Lover," he purred. "You answer when I call. This is very good."

"Eric." She replied back, with as much equanimity as she could muster.

"Did you like your gift?" His voice was a verbal leer. His unflappability was actually impressive.

"No."

"But you have it charged and near you. Have you been waiting for me to call you?"

She had no answer for that. The silence that ensued should have been awkward, but it wasn't. The blush that had started at her hair line had made it's way down to her decolletage.

"Did you need something?"

"I can think of many things. Tell me you have changed your mind and you will go out with me on Saturday."

"I can't, I work."

"Thursday then."

"Eric," she sighed. "I can't just go out. I have a job that demands my nights and a kid that demands me at all other waking moments."

"You're right. I'll pick you up tomorrow morning at 10. Your daughter will be in school by then, will she not?"

Sookie shot a look over her shoulder and walked into her bedroom for some semblance of privacy. She walked around in circles, unable to sit still.

"Listen, Eric. I don't do guys." Now it was his turn to be silent.

"You're a lesbian?"

"No, I don't do girls either. I don't date. People are shit, you might have noticed." He laughed at this.

"I will change your mind. Be ready at 10."

With that, he hung up. She huffed in vexation and fell backwards on her bed. She knew she needed to see Eric, if only to deliver Indira's message. And give the phone back. She really didn't want a repeat nightmarish visit from the dark, tiny woman. Who Indira was to Eric was unclear. It would just be the icing on the cake if she was some deranged groupie that Eric didn't even know or remember. Perhaps telling him of the otherworldly message would be enough to throw him off her trail once and for all. No one liked a crazy girl. He was like a bloodhound who had picked up the scent of her fear; he was fixated on her.

A girl could only hope.

III.

The next morning Eric pulled up to the shitty apartment building he had followed Sookie to the first night he had seen her. He was invigorated at the idea of seeing her again. Something about her got his blood up. He realized the day after their first encounter that he was looking forward to seeing her again, even with the verbal lashing he'd received from her. He had sent the phone and waited to call. It occurred to him that she was skittish, like a wild horse. She would need a gentle hand before she yielded to him. But they always did eventually.

He was surprised to see her waiting out on the street below. She had probably not wanted to trouble him with finding parking, which was oddly considerate. The apartments truly were shitty. They were not even 'new' shitty, with cheap vinyl siding. They were old school shitty, with the wooden siding warped and weathered from decades of salty humidity, the paint peeling in mismatching colors. In the light of day it looked at lot worse than he remembered.

In stark contrast, Sookie looked even better than he remembered. It actually kind of pissed him off.

He was hoping to get her out of his system the old-fashioned way. He would fuck her, maybe a few times if she was good in bed, and then the itch would be scratched and he could stop thinking about her and keep it moving. She was not even dressed up for him. Her long blonde hair was down in waves, covered in a cheap black trucker's cap. Black yoga pants and a white tank top covered in an over-sized jean jacket. Her face was bare save for a smattering of bright pink lipstick. She could have been going to the laundry mat. She reminded him of girls from around where he grew up. He couldn't tell if it was endearing or repulsive.

He wasn't a complete asshole, though. As soon as Sookie started making her way towards the passenger door, he put the car in park right in the middle of the street and got out to open it for her. She seemed confused by the gesture. She either wasn't used to men opening the door for her or she wasn't expecting it from him. Two cars rolled up behind him and he leveled a menacing gaze at the driver in the Prius, who looked like he was about to honk, but then thought better of it.

They were on the road back towards the heart of the city. She was nervous, he could feel it. He cast an easy-going smile at her and asked her about mundane things to try to loosen her up. She answered kindly and seemed to be keeping a very tight leash on what she said to him. When they finally pulled up to the record store in Ballard, she dared a question.

"What are we doing?"

"Records and coffee, it's a winning combination." He shrugged. She got out of the car and he followed dutifully behind her. Once in the store he was accosted by the owner, whom he knew well, and Sookie wandered off to browse. He did some browsing of his own before shuffling off in search of her again.

He put his hand on the small of her back and looked over her shoulder to see what she had found so far, indulging himself in the smell that pooled at the nape of her neck. She smelt like sunshine and honey. She pulled the records close to her chest and turned around.

"Let's see what you found." He held his hand out to her, and reluctantly she handed them over.

The first record surprised him. Terrapin Station by the Grateful Dead. The next record made him laugh. Silk Purse by Linda Ronstadt. Linda sat on the cover, her hair a righteous black halo around her head, in a literal pen of pigs and shit, her eyes cast demurely down on the dirt and a sweet, secret smile on her lips. His mother had had this record when he was growing up, the whole living in pig filth a great allusion to her life.

"You surprise me."

Sookie rolled her eyes and snatched the records back.

"What kind of music do you think I listen to?"

He shrugged. He hadn't really thought about it, although given the opportunity to guess, this wouldn't have been it.

"I don't know why I'm even thinking of getting them. I don't own a record player." She moved to put them back and he snatched them away from her again.

"I do, I'll get them. You can listen to them when you come over." He waggled his eyebrows at her and delighted in her blush. He paid, although he could see her hand twitch when they made it up the counter, and he led her back out onto the street and down towards a coffee shop. It was a small intimate place, and while he didn't relish all the talking they'd be forced to do, he reminded himself of the long game.

It wasn't raining and he asked if she minded sitting outside so he could smoke. They chatted about nothing in particular and when their coffee was almost gone, Sookie's eyes took on a serious look as she took a few deep breaths like she was steeling herself to say something. He didn't press her, merely watched her as she geared up to talk and stopped herself several times. This was typically the lead up to something that he was pretty sure would piss him off. This is where she said she had a boyfriend, or she was still getting over a case of the clap. Or something else equally off-putting.

"Have you ever been to a psychic?"

He raised an eyebrow at this. It was not a totally left-field question. In fact, most women he fucked read tarot. Or stripped. Or stripped _and _read tarot. Most groupies were into that kind of shit. Even Indira had been particularly into the occult. She got psychic readings and was into astrology. What being a Virgo sun and having a Sagittarius in Venus meant, he had no clue, but she had seemed to think it was very important to know about him. When they had rented their first house together, an old shotgun-style house in New Orleans, she had hired a dowser to clear the bad energy out. He hadn't given a fuck about any of it.

"Why do you ask?" He countered. She bit her lip. It would have been sexy had she not been so ill at ease with him as she was right now.

"This is not something I typically tell people, so I'd appreciate if you could keep it to yourself." She gave him a pointed look. When he nodded, she continued. "I'm... I guess what you would call a medium. Sometimes the dead come to me, speak through me." She fidgeted with the napkin in her hands. "After I met you the other night, someone came to me, with a message for you."

She peered up at him, asking if he wanted her to go on. For his part, he was trying very hard not to give credence to the cold feeling that was starting to creep up on him. He clenched and unclenched his free hand underneath the table, his half-smoked cigarette still dangling in the other. He did not move, and he didn't take his eyes off her, willing her to say whatever it was she was going to say. He would have made her now, if he had to. Sookie closed her eyes and exhaled a long breath.

"Okay. Here goes." She kept her eyes closed, like she was trying hard to see something. "Her name was Indira. Long, brown curly hair. Very tiny. Middle Eastern, maybe? Very gorgeous blue eyes."

His stomach dropped.

"I know her."

"Okay, that's good. Shit, I wish I would have written this down. She told me to tell you that the worlds breaks everyone. And when it can't break them, it kills them. It kills the very good and the very brave and the very sweet people impartially. That's not verbatim, I'm sorry." She opened her eyes again and seemed to almost flinch as she looked at him. He realized he must have looked very fucking angry to warrant such a reaction.

"She told me to tell you that. And she also said her heart was too big. She was very sad about that particular part."

Eric felt like he was about to do something very foolish and very violent in public. Instead, he got up, pulling his wallet from his pocket and pulling out two twenties, tossing them recklessly and harshly onto the table.

"Did she now?" He inquired, his voice laced with venom and sarcasm. "Did she also tell you how much you should charge for delivering such an important message?"

"Excuse me?" Sookie seemed to realize then that he was mocking her. Her cheeks flushed with rage. He noticed how southern she sounded, and wondered if her anger brought out that lilt. He hadn't taken notice of it before. It didn't matter, now. He planned to steer clear of this bitch if it was the last thing he did.

"It's a nice con you got going there, but I wasn't born yesterday, sweetheart." He had planned to walk away and leave her there. There were plenty of cabs in the city. He didn't get a chance though. Sookie shot up like a small fury, pulling the red flip phone out of purse, tossing it on the table, and promptly stalked the other direction, but not before landing a brutal glare on him. It said 'fuck you' without all the fanfare. If looks could kill...

It was good fucking riddance, as far as he was concerned.


	4. Chapter 4

**AN: Just want to say a big thank you to everyone who's reviewed this story. It means a ton to me. Honestly, I would probably still be writing this drivel even if I didn't have an audience, but it's so nice to hear feedback. Ya'll are the shit. I am not the best at replying to reviews, but just know I do read them and they totally hype me up and make me want to write even more, so keep 'em coming.**

I.

When Dawn had not made herself known at work by that Wednesday, nor returned a simple phone call, Sookie set off to her house just after dropping Jolene off at her school in the morning. She did not know what she expected to find. Part of her hoped to find Dawn shacked up with her new somebody. She would even take Dawn out of control on the bottle or a drug-induced bender, as unlikely as such a scenario was. She just simply wanted to see her, to prove to herself that something was not terribly wrong. Because she felt in her bones that something was most certainly terribly wrong.

She pulled up through Decatur street. There was a simple beauty about it. The trees were old and hung over the houses like towering, ubiquitous sentries. The yards were littered with the remnants and by-products of everyday life: overturned bicycles, boxes waiting for their turn in the recycling bin, old plastic broken chairs with ashtrays on the armrests, pieces of furniture that had seen more glorious days. The homes were not well kept but they were well lived in, and Sookie thought that sometimes the difference between those two things was a very faint and irrelevant line.

Dawn lived in a glorified guest house. It was on the backside of someone's property, so it was not visible from the street. Real estate in downtown Seattle was scarce and expensive. Whoever owned the property had turned the guest house into a single-family home by sectioning off the yard of the main house with a tall wooden fence and had probably doubled his rental income in the process. You could walk to Dawn's house from the street, alongside the fence and the alleyway, but you couldn't drive up to it. The effect was something she assumed was akin to the cramped, sardined feel of an Asian city.

Dawn's place bore the same marks of life that the other houses on the street did. Children's toys littered the miniature patch of grass out front; a Little Tike's slide that was bleached and ragged from sunshine, a doll, worn from use and battered with black marks on its plastic head, a clapped out, tattered skateboard. Dawn's children ranged from 4 to 16 and the personal effects were obvious.

The house, as small as it was, was very nice by Sookie's standards. The roof looked new and the siding was painted a fresh pale blue. The windows had great, white shutters on them, the kind that reminded her of back home. The lock on the door was a new and shiny matte brushed nickel. It was a lot nicer than the hovel Sookie lived in, compliments of the three baby daddies Dawn had acquired and the child support they dutifully paid her each month.

She banged on the door, her free hand in the back pocket of her jeans. She banged again, and again when she heard no movement. Finally, she called out Dawn's name. Told her to get off her ass and get up and answer the door. She waited patiently for a response. When she heard none, she tried the knob and found it unlocked and stepped into the living room.

The place was silent, had the stagnant feel of a home that had not been opened to outside forces in several days. The air just kind of hung there and smelt too much like stale human and not enough like grass and wind and rain and the dirt you track in on accident.

She surveyed the living room, took notice of the 10th grade Algebra book laid open on the coffee table, the printed-out worksheet next to it lying half-finished and forgotten. A candle on the shelf next to the window burned down to the bottom of the glass, as though it had never been blown out but had died its natural death. A pack of Newport's and a lighter next to it.

She made her way down the hallway and checked the rooms, although she knew she wouldn't find anyone in them. The house was too cold and too silent. That type of silence that seems oddly like the loudest noise you ever heard. She could hear every movement she made now, down to the shuffle of her jeans. When she finally got back to the front of the house and turned into the kitchen, what she saw there disconcerted her most of all.

The kitchen table was covered in the remnants of a morning breakfast. A bowl of cereal, the milk rank and the cheerios in it puffed and bloated, two plates of dried up toast. A half-full cup of coffee, the stain of Dawn's mauve lipstick tattooed on the rim. It was like the whole family had jumped ship on their life mid-morning.

The most unnerving part of it all was that Dawn's purse sat on one of the chairs. She walked over to it, palming her way through the contents, hoping to find the wallet and the cellphone missing. They were both still there. Her phone had died, probably days ago. No theory she could stretch made sense anymore. Even if Dawn had been running from the mob, surely, she would have taken her wallet, or her phone, or even her purse without her phone and wallet. She felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand up, felt a cold chill meander down her spine.

Having seen the mess of food in the dining area, she could not in good conscience leave it there. She wondered if she was interfering with a crime scene and quickly pushed that unsavory thought far into the back of her head. She pulled her coat off and washed all the dishes by hand, by-passing the dishwasher, then dried and put them away.

When she was satisfied with the little work she'd done, she grabbed her keys and walked back out to where she had parked, turning the bottom lock on her way out. She knew where Dawn's mother lived. She had dropped the kids off there for Dawn before. If anyone had an idea where Dawn was, that was the best place to start.

II.

Friday's were for drinking. Eric knew this like he knew every disparaging, irreparable truth he had ever come across. The sky was blue. Cops were bad. Sex was best when you were high. And Friday's were for drinking. Any day was good for drinking, but on a Friday, you could get shit-faced with impunity. And that was just the road he planned to walk tonight.

He was well on his way to oblivion and he relished in it. He had taken off his shirt and pulled his hair back into a small ponytail at the nape of his neck an hour ago. They had been getting in the way of his drinking. Corrosion of Conformity's _Deliverance _was screaming through the speakers of his condo, the floor to ceiling window's awash with the light of the city below him reflecting off the swathes of rainwater beating down on them. The music was almost too loud for him for once. He felt old. Like the weight of everything he had ever experienced or carried with him was suddenly and finally on his shoulders and he was almost too weary to take it.

He fell onto the couch, his half-finished bottle of Jim Beam in his hand, and contemplated putting on something quieter, something padded out with softness and understanding. He peered at the wall of records and tried to think. It was so fucking hard to think. Bob Dylan, maybe. But no. Not Dylan. Dylan would make him remember things that he was trying to forget tonight.

He got back up and sauntered towards the wall of records. There was so much he was trying to lose from his consciousness and not nearly enough alcohol to drown it all. He needed, craved, something harder. He wanted to crush his own mind in on itself, so he didn't have to feel so many goddamned things anymore. He especially wanted to forget what Sookie had told him a few days ago.

Part of him knew and accepted that Sookie was simply wrong. There was no way Indira would come to her and speak to her. Eric had pleaded with Indira, had talked to the faded figment of her memory so many times, and Indira had never answered. Why would she show herself to a stranger? To spew nonsense that meant nothing to him or her? If Indira could reach out from wherever she was now, he could not contemplate that she would not come to him first. He had wallowed and grieved for her enough for several lifetimes. Even if she did not love him, a fact he knew was not true, she would have surely appeared to him even if only to abate his misery. Of that he was certain, or at least, he wanted to be certain.

The notion that he was not so sure made him angry. He knew what anger did to him. It was as much a friendly fire as it was a destructive one. Anger could all at once propel him forward into creativity and crush everything he held in his life in the same, even stroke. It was the most volatile thing about him. It was the reason he stayed quiet. It was the catalyst for the love he was able to give. It was everything he hated and enjoyed about himself in one solitary, fucked up package.

He thumbed through his records until he came across one that had belonged to her. He kept them scattered across his collection like Easter eggs so he could be reminded of her when he least expected it. _Grace_ by Jeff Buckley. This had been one of her favorites. She played it so often that it skipped now in some places, a small thing that somehow made it more magical, because he knew when to expect them, like they were her own special mark on the songs. He put it on and grabbed his bottle and wandered back to his bedroom.

As he walked through the living room and the hallway, he finally accepted the realization of how much he hated the place. It was a nagging thought that had been burrowing into the back of his mind for some time now. Pam had bought the condo on his behalf when he was in rehab; a high-rise that looked right onto the city. It was sterile and clean and perfectly put together, not at all like the farmhouse in Bellingham had been. Not a thing like the house he'd grown up in, not even a shadow of that worn, lived in feeling existed here. Pam had pushed him to sell the farmhouse and move to the city after Indira had died. No one liked the idea of him holed up in that old farmhouse alone, and he couldn't blame them. Here they could engage with him regularly and keep an eye on him. Make sure he didn't kill himself.

He stumbled into his room and made his way towards the closet, turning on the lamp on the table on his way, knowing what he was looking for without really being in complete control of his actions. He pulled the box down from the top shelf of the closet easily and set it on the floor, depositing himself down on the floor with it, the box between his legs. Everything that Indira had owned in their life together had now dwindled into a single box. It would have been hilarious, considering what a pack rat she had been, if it wasn't so fucking depressing.

He pulled out the white shirt on top first. Indira had been a very big Alice in Chains fan. This had been her favorite shirt. It was so small in his hands it looked like it could have fit a child. In simple black script on the front it read, 'If I would, could, you?', the words steepled downwards like an upside-down pyramid. He continued through the box, a silver compact mirror, a worn diary she had kept the first time she had went on tour with him, a stack of pictures she had kept on her vanity tucked into the seam of the wood and the mirror. The pictures had all been of them together or of him alone. She had loved him. Had loved him truly madly deeply. It still shook him up when he really thought about it.

He grabbed the teddy bear next. Felicia had brought it to her when she was in the hospital. Three tortuous fucking weeks in the hospital before she had finally succumbed to bacterial endocarditis. All that trash built up in her system from shooting up with dirty needles. She had never been very strong. She had never really been very attached to the teddy bear, either. It had just been a token to her; something that proved that there were people who cared whether she lived or died. She had clutched it the whole hospital stay, had died with it in her bed.

The bottom of the box was just books. Indira had been an absolute bookworm. She carried books everywhere. She carried them in her pocket when they were small enough, pulling them out in the middle of crowded rooms and flipping open to the middle and starting back up on them like she had never finished them in the first place. She would read to him, too. He was ashamed to admit he couldn't remember most of anything she had ever read to him. All he could remember was the melodic cadence of her voice as he drifted off around her, like he was spun silk and she was the spool.

The book he held in his hands now brought a smile to his lips. It was Ernest Hemingway's _A Farewell to Arms_. It had been one of her favorites. She had said that she liked it because it was good enough to make her sad and that was something special. She used to tell him that he was like Hemingway. When he asked her what the hell she meant, she said that he was like him because he was cold and mean and didn't talk unless he meant it. She had said so with a warm smile on her face, like those were attributes to be admired. The cover was bent from the use she had gotten out of it. Channeling her, he flipped the book open and landed on a page and started reading.

_'__The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.'_

He forgot to breathe for a good few long moments. He read the passage over and over again, trying to convince himself that it wasn't the same. But it was.

He stood up quickly, so quickly his bottle of Jim Beam knocked over and spilled next to him, flooding the boots on his closet floor with whiskey. He walked back out to the living room, book in hand, and pulled his shirt on, grabbed his keys, and ran out into the night and the rain.

III.

Sookie sat in Gran and Jason's room, the tap-tap-tap of the tree brushing up against their window the only sound beside the dictation of her own voice. It was a Friday night and she was sitting in the rocking chair in the corner, her feet curled up underneath her, while she read from the book they had started last week. Jolene had fallen asleep an hour ago. Dawn's dog, Rosie, sat at her feet in a lump of wiry, sleek black fur, breathing deeply and evenly in her slumber.

If she had thought that visiting Dawn's mother would have abated some of her fears, she had been wrong. When she had seen Mrs. Green on Wednesday her unfiltered panic had only solidified what Sookie had been thinking all along. No one knew where the fuck Dawn was and no one was feeling easy about it. Dawn had never picked her kids up from school on Thursday of last week and no one had heard from her since. Even her baby daddies, who typically liked a good fuck-up from her as they could use it against her, were worried and unbelieving at the notion that she had 'ran off to have a good time' as the cops had so delicately suggested when they had filed a missing person report.

Sookie had promised to look for Dawn and help any way she could, and she intended to keep her word. When Mrs. Green asked her to take Dawn' dog, a massive German Shepard who didn't get along with her dogs a lick, Sookie had felt it wrong to refuse. She had offered her help, after all.

So now Rosie was the new fixture in their house. Sookie turned the page in the book she was reading and continued her dissertation aloud. It was a small concession to read to Gran and Jason, but it meant something important to her. Since they couldn't communicate, it was a given that talking straight at them got old after a while; began to feel eerie and out of place. So Sookie had long ago taken to reading them. It was a way to feel close to them on a daily basis and she enjoyed it. She had always enjoyed the solitary comfort of getting lost in a book. The real world was typically disappointing. Books gave her at least a modicum of control over the disappointment she absorbed.

"_We are familiar with people who seek out solitude: penitents, failures, saints, or prophets. They retreat to deserts, preferably, where they live on locusts and honey. Others, however, live in caves or cells on remote islands; some-more spectacularly-squat in cages mounted high atop poles swaying in the breeze. They do this to be nearer God. Their solitude is a self-mortification by which they do penance. They act in the belief that they are living a life pleasing to God. Or they wait months, years, for their solitude to be broken by some divine message that they hope then speedily to broadcast among mankind.  
Grenouille's case was nothing of the sort. There was not the least notion of God in his head. He was not doing penance or waiting for some supernatural inspiration."_

She tasted the words, saccharine and unfamiliar on her tongue. She felt for the guy. She had long ago closed herself off from others, too. The only difference was she had done so unconsciously and the man in this book had done so deliberately. She felt envious of his surety. Most days, she was not so sure about the direction her life had taken.

The silence of the room, punctuated only by her voice, was a broken by a voracious pounding on her door. If she were a dog her ears would have perked up. As it was, the dog at feet had done just that, and a low growl emitted from her chest as she looked out towards the front door. Sookie hushed her, choosing to ignore the way her heart hammered in her chest at the sudden intrusion the sound presented.

She turned the lights off in Gran and Jason's room and shut the door as she made her way to the living room, Rosie hot at her heels, her body stiff and on alert, her eyes sparkling with a clarity Sooke wished to possess. She did not know who the hell was at her door. At this hour, it couldn't be anything good.

She made her way to the front window and pulled the shades aside discreetly only to find Eric Northman on the other side of the door. She couldn't see his face, but she would have known his stance and countenance anywhere, the heavy set of his shoulders, the surety of his posture. He looked tense. His leather jacket had rain rolling off it and his hair was soaked, his face obscured in the darkness afforded by the night where her porch light could not reach. She took a deep breath and tried to think. She didn't want to answer the door.

Just as she was deliberating, the pounding resumed, and now Rosie started to bark. It was not a bark of excitement but a deep, guttural bark of ferocity. She wondered if Rosie knew something she didn't and felt like a fool as she walked towards the front door and opened it a crack. The last thing she wanted was for Jolene to wake up.

As soon as she opened the door, a heavy-booted foot pushed its way in. She barely had time to back up before Eric had pushed the door open and it landed with a resounding crack on the wall next to it. Eric barged right in like he owned the place.

"What the fuck?" It was a question more than a statement. Rosie seemed to sense her distress and began to growl lowly, the hair on her back ridged up and her paws planted firmly in front of her as she crouched down ever so slightly.

The sight of the large angry dog seemed to give Eric pause, for he stopped his foray into her home and took a deep breath. The fucking asshole. He clearly had no qualms about entering her house without an invitation, but he had enough self-preservation in his mind to know when his own hide was on the line. She hated him at that moment. She though fervently of how to get rid of him. She really didn't want to call the cops, an act she found inherently distasteful. She also really didn't want to fight with him either, lest her daughter, or worse, Palmira wake up. Palmira simply did not tolerate nonsense and she knew things would spiral out of control if she squared off with Eric. She looked down to Rosie and silently prayed that the dog would attack him straight back out the fucking door.

He seemed to make a great effort to school his face into more dispassionate lines before he spoke. Sookie arched a single delicate eyebrow at him, her arms crossed over her chest. The grandfather clock in the living room, the only thing of value she had left from their home in Bon Temps, bleated on loudly behind them, an anxious drone between them hanging in the air.

"I'm need to talk to my wife." He said simply. "And you're going to help me."


End file.
